


the crinkled corners of my paper planes

by philthestone



Series: destrozada, just a little bit [3]
Category: Brooklyn Nine-Nine (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Gen, another snippet from the Amy Fake Dies AU, listen i need to go to bed but here i am bc i love this terrible au
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-18
Updated: 2016-04-18
Packaged: 2018-06-02 23:26:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,351
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6587452
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/philthestone/pseuds/philthestone
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Can you do that? Do they teach you that stuff?” Jake had leaned forward, steamed-milk mustache and all. “Santiago, can you do a <em>somersault</em> entrance?”</p><p>“I’m co-working a prostitution ring,” Amy had said, snorting. “Relax.”</p><p>“<em>Relax,</em>” Jake said, swiveling back to face his computer. “Definitely not one of Santiago’s sex tapes.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	the crinkled corners of my paper planes

**Author's Note:**

> im so sorry that i wrote more for the Amy Fake Dies Verse au but also im not at all this au is my Pride and Joy
> 
> *finger guns* donthateme

For the first time in what feels like her entire life, Amy’s pen is lead-weight heavy between her fingers, difficult to maneuver. The stamped documents in front of her are official and orderly and formatted correctly - crisp and smooth, so unlike the paper airplanes made from incorrectly-formatted paperwork that Jake was throwing into the garbage can three weeks ago - and paradoxical in their relaxing appearance. The papers are official and crisp and orderly and the only thing she can see is, _List family members or next of kin to be informed of the nature of the operation._

It’s like the reality of “I’m going to be _dead_ ” is finally sinking in.

Her parents, she thinks immediately. 

Not her brothers - or, at least, not all of them, because there are so many and it would definitely be a risk, telling so many people such sensitive information. The cheap plastic of the ballpoint pen pinched between her fingers is hard and slowly turning sticky from the warmth of her skin as she imagines the twins’ looks of shock; sees Raphe’s drawn, worried face, the same one he’d made when she fell of the swing when she was six and broke her arm. She hears Luis in her head, sitting beside her in the backyard grass in one of his rumpled t-shirts, saying, _Mimi, you can’t always play the_ protagonista, like he’d say when they were kids and she’d get mad that she couldn’t always be the hero - couldn’t always be the Superman, the Robin Hood, the Nancy Drew who solved the case and saved the day.

_List family members or next of kin to be informed of the nature of the operation._

Luis's dorky laugh is still playing on repeat in her head and the mug of coffee sitting on the edge of the table is from that morning, its smell stale and irritating. There's a clock on the wall, mounted above the ventilation grate, and it, too, is chipping into the edge of Amy's concentration - _tick, tick, tick, tick,_ non-stop rhythm. Across the table, Agent Alvarez clears her throat softly. Amy swallows and refocuses on the paper and hates that her fingers are itching for a cigarette. 

Clearly, telling her brothers is out of the question, and something in Amy’s chest twists at the realization that all the reactions she’s been imagining in her head have been as though she gets to tell them, in person, exactly where she’s going. She tries to swallow and something gets twisted awkwardly in her esophagus halfway through the motion, because how do you even parse it, the idea that this time next week, somebody is going to be telling the boy who held your hand under the covers when you had nightmares when you were three that you're _dead, gone,_ departed from the world and all its backyard swings and rumpled t-shirts and play-pretend games of heroes and villains. 

There really isn’t anyone other than her parents that she could tell, reasonably, and she realizes for what feels like the first time ( _too many firsts_ \- too many, for a girl who claims not to function in chaos) that it is only now, with this paper in front of her, that she's fully understanding what Rosa's words from before meant.

( _Something bad might go down, and I’d hate myself if I didn’t tell you this._ )

The pen drops from Amy’s fingers onto the table as though burning and she stares at the official print line on the official print documents, sitting so neatly in front of her. 

_Tick tick tick tick tick tick tick._

_Everyone’s gonna think you’re_ dead, Santiago! Rosa’s saying, harsh and bitter and sudden. She'd been angry - Rosa had been _angry_ , more so than usual, and Amy had thought initially that it had been frustration with the Agents' dismissive attitudes, or annoyance at any manner of other things. _She was thinking of the risks_ , the part of her brain hyped on adrenaline and competition had said - consoling, soothing, reassuring. 

She’d told herself that she understood, that she knew the repercussions. She'd said, _I know_.

(She didn't really know.)

( _List family members or next of kin to be informed of the nature of the operation._ )

“Detective Santiago?” Agent Alvarez’s voice is gentler than Amy has ever heard it over the course of the whole op. She swallows, and looks up at the other woman’s questioning gaze over the table, eyes flicking over the pressed white of her collar and the feathery dipped-blonde tips of her hair. Amy doesn't want _gentle_ , as though she's suddenly going to break, because that's absurd - she's a professional, and has dealt with far more emotionally taxing things than _this_. She feels the stale smell of the coffee stick in her throat and wishes a little bit that Captain Holt hadn't returned to his office so soon. 

Rosa is standing outside the room, arms stiffly crossed over her chest, glaring at the wall opposite. Amy swallows again. 

“Is everything alright?” asks Alvarez.

Amy picks up the pen, still warm from where her fingers were wound around it, and looks down at the paper.

(She can see his laughing eyes from a week ago, when she dropped by the precinct with the coffee - a small apology for not being around that much and leaving him with one of their bigger, more complicated cases. Technically, she wasn’t supposed to have come to the precinct at all that day, but the most traitorous voice in her head - the one that she usually ignored - had said that it was worth the way his face lit up in a smile when she slipped into the seat across from his and pushed the fancy caramel macchiatto over the table. 

“Sorry I ditched our case,” she’d said, grimacing, as Jake had lifted the coffee into the air with the pomp and circumstance of a man crowning the next queen of England. 

“You brought me Greenberg’s finest! Ah, Santiago, your sins are forgiven.”

" _Only_ one time,” she’d said, raising her eyebrows, because coffee was not usually allowed to be eight dollars and Jake already had a frothy mustache.

“Shhh.” With his eyes closed. “I’m reveling in the expensiveness. Go back to being mysterious and stuff. Like, sneak out of the precinct doing spy moves. Can you do that? Do they teach you that stuff?” Jake had leaned forward, steamed-milk mustache and all. “Santiago, can you do a _somersault_ entrance?”

“I’m co-working a prostitution ring,” Amy had said, snorting. “Relax.”

“ _Relax,_ ” Jake said, swiveling back to face his computer. “Definitely not one of Santiago’s sex tapes.”

She'd groaned, and made to get up from the desk. 

“Hey -” Paused, looking back at her, one hand still clutching the coffee. Something about the sudden softness of his brown eyes made swallowing difficult. “Um, anyway. Come back soon, or whatever. It’s boring around here with no one to throw eraser shavings at.”

“Try Scully,” she’d said. “Or Hitchcock. Or Boyle.”

“ _Charles?_ ” In his most betrayed, offended voice. “How could you even _think_ that of me, Amy Santiago!”)

Amy stares at the paper - the crisp, official, stamped paper, her pen in hand, and tries not to think about how Jake is two floors above them. She could go see him, she thinks. After she signs the paper. 

( _I wish that something could have happened -_ )

She _could_. 

In an alternate reality, where she wasn’t Amy Santiago, and there weren’t Rules about this kind of thing, and she wasn’t about to sign this paper, she could go two floors up and see his soft brown eyes, so clear in her head, in front of her. 

She could.

(She doesn’t.)

She thinks about running through the backyard barefoot after Carlos and Mama's caramel onions and the smell of her father's bookshelf, of Agent Alvarez's gentle voice and the stiff papers in front of her - and she thinks about Jake's frothy milk mustache and blames the burgeoning ache in her stomach on the thick odor of stale coffee across from her. 

She thinks, _Something bad went down_ , and signs her name at the bottom of the document.


End file.
